


'Cause It's All The Same

by spockandawe



Series: For The Life, For The Day, For The Hours [2]
Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Erik Killmonger Lives, Gen, Post-Canon, Rehabilitation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 05:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13968462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spockandawe/pseuds/spockandawe
Summary: See, here’s the thing. You’re a prisoner. No real question about that part of things. But it seems like Wakanda is defining ‘prisoner’ in a way that you can’t get a grip on, and it’s not like you’ve got lots of friendly visitors jumping at the chance to clear up questions for you.





	'Cause It's All The Same

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://spockandawe.tumblr.com/post/171855763136/cause-its-all-the-same-spockandawe-marvel)

See, here’s the thing. You’re a prisoner. No real question about that part of things. But it seems like Wakanda is defining ‘prisoner’ in a way that you can’t get a grip on, and it’s not like you’ve got lots of friendly visitors jumping at the chance to clear up questions for you.

You’re free to roam… within limits. You made a point of finding some spots where your fancy new kimoyo beads stopped granting you access to doors, and they definitely cut you off here and there. But you’ve still got a _lot_ of space to roam. Even got some access to the outdoors, even if it’s only courtyards. You’re not sure if that’s even the extent of it, because even if you’re limited to this one building (facility? compound?), it’s large enough that a couple days of exploring haven’t been enough to get it all mapped out in your mind.

It’s not well-labeled for starters, and that’s not your fault. There’s gotta be a way to tell directions in here, but you sure haven’t been able to spot it. The floors aren’t even labeled, wouldn’t want to make it _easy_ on you or anything. If you weren’t good at retracing your steps, you’d be worried about completely losing your room. Still, past that, your legs were pretty wobbly that first day or two, and you had to stop to rest even just during short little trips and weren’t about to get yourself stranded in unfamiliar territory. You figure out that you’ve got your new powers still, but you try not to make a show of it. You can’t afford to remind anyone that those are still there to take away.

But okay, biggest factor. The building’s not crowded, but there’s people around. Run into them in the halls, or there’s social areas and shit like that. Most of the building—the parts you have access to—seems residential, but you haven’t magically acquired all that Wakandan culture you were never around to absorb, and it’s not like you could have studied shit for real with how closely the country’s kept its secrets, so you’re not even sure of that much.

Yeah, too bad nobody’s around who’s willing to give you the time of day.

Literally, almost. That’s what’s got you more sure than anything that this whole deal is just some weird-ass version of jail, except that one, you don’t know what anyone else here would be getting punished for, and two, none of them _acts_ like they’re being punished. They’re all decked out with more fancy tech than you, that’s for sure, and you’ve staked out some of the doors your beads don’t work on to see other folks going in and out. It’s like you’re in weird jail and everyone else is just going about their lives like there’s nothing strange at all about this entire situation.

You’re never going to pass for a born Wakandan, not with this setup, so you don’t bother pretending. But damn, it’s impressive how many people go suddenly deaf when you try to ask them a question, or how an astonishing zero percent of the population seems to speak English. Some of them probably don’t, but at least some of them do. You don’t know how many people got the memo that you’re multilingual, plus you don’t think _anyone’s_ got hard evidence of how fluent you are, so you try to at least get some quality eavesdropping time in, but even if they don’t know you speak the language, conversations tend to die out when you get close, or at least get boring as shit. You guess meaningless small talk about the weather is an international experience.

The Dora Milaje, _they_ speak English for sure, probably speak more languages than you do, but they’re ignoring you harder than anyone else. Everyone else acts like they don’t hear you, but they go the extra mile and pretend like they don’t even see you. Makes you want to act like a dumbass American tourist at Buckingham palace, trying to do anything to get a reaction, but you can’t afford to go convincing everyone around that you’re an idiot when you’re sure you’re a great job of looking like a dumbass American on just your own merits.

And you killed one of them, can’t forget that. That’s an important death to remember. Course you know how bad it was when your unit lost someone, and you’re pretty sure that your training doesn’t compare to whatever treatment they get around here. A smart military’s going to cultivate those bonds between soldiers, even without the whole ‘elite traditional bodyguard unit’ deal. The ones who died because of you and your fight, that’s bad enough, but you killed one real direct and personal too, and that’s going to do some damage.

Closest you ever come to actually trying to provoke them is when one is pretending not to hear you ask if there’s a library around, if you can find any books or movies or something— She’s looking right through you like you aren’t even there, and you almost tell her that hey, guess what, when you were a little, little kid and your dad told you about the Dora Milaje, you asked if you could be one when you grew up, then sulked for a whole day when he said there were no boys allowed. You’re sure she’d laugh at you, not take it as a compliment, but you don’t _care,_ you’re just going to make her _acknowledge you—_ What stops you is that you’re not going to bring up your dad in front of _these_ people, not going to just discuss him all casual, like it’s no big deal.

Meals get brought to you, which is good, because if you were counting on anyone to tell you where to go for food, you’d probably starve to death. If you’re in, they don’t _knock—_ too primitive, or something. A screen materializes on the wall next to the door showing video of the person outside, and a little alert noise sounds on your beads until you dismiss it. If you open the door, they hand the meal off to you, if you’re out or if you don’t feel like it, they leave it outside your door in… fuck, you don’t even know. Some kind of high tech thermos that keys off your kimoyo beads to open.

You’ve got the net to entertain you and— Okay, you know in theory how to call your cousin, but you’re sure as shit not going to do that just to whine that you’re _bored_ or you’re _lonely._ You can do bored and lonely just fine, you’ve been trained to resist physical and psychological torture, for chrissake. But if you have to put up with much more of every person around you (in _this_ goddamn country, of all places) refusing to acknowledge your existence, you’re going to break something.

There’s still fresh news breaking about Wakanda, though you’re still not doing more than skimming the headlines. T’Challa is in the middle of that storm and is making appearances and meeting world leaders all over the globe, and _good,_ you hope it sucks ass. You’ll take what you can get while you’re stuck here. But there are mentions of King T’Challa’s younger sister and establishing… some sort of educational outreach facility, you don’t even know. But you read enough to collect dates and look at patterns and you make your best guess at when she’ll be back in town.

You guess right. You figure out the kimoyo bead version of texting instead of doing the hologram thing again, and decide on a simple message.

‘ _I can’t figure out this tech’_

You nailed it. It’s less than a half hour before she’s there in person, and she doesn’t even bother with hellos, just starts right in with how it’s so easy and she doesn’t know what the problem is and wasting her time, et cetera, like she isn’t the kind of person who’s weak against ‘look, here’s a puzzle’, and has no defenses at all against, ‘I’m counting on _you_ to solve it.’

Crazy. No wonder T’Challa put her in charge of sharing Wakandan science and tech with the world. Kind of terrifying thinking what havoc she’ll wreak when she’s working on such a global scale, and you hope you’ll have the net access to sit back and watch all that chaos unfold.

You don’t interrupt, just sit back and play it patient and wait for her to run out of steam. There’s only so long she can go without any input from you about what the issue actually is. It takes a while, but hey, its nice listening to someone _talking to you._

And finally, eventually, she slows down enough to demand, “Well?”

You nod towards the walls. “Those are embedded screens, yeah?”

“Yes.” She rolls her eyes. “Was that really it? Because I do have other things to do.”

“And I activate them with my bracelet.”

“With your _beads,_ yes. That’s good, there’s only so many times I want to explain those to you.”

“Nah, once would be plenty.” Her head snaps around and she glares at you, but you ignore that. “Once the screens are on. How do I _use_ them?”

You figured out some of the most basic basics on your own, but you’re not going to give her an excuse to jump ahead too far.

And you called this right, because she’s already grinning, and without any hesitation she says, “Give me your arm.”

You’re paying close attention to what she does with your kimoyo beads, but you’re pretty sure you’re only picking up on a small part of it. She starts at what would almost be an insultingly simple ‘this is a computer monitor’ spot, if it wasn’t all taking place on ridiculous science fiction technology with no visible controls. It escalates fast, and it’s good that you were expecting that, because you might have some input in terms of steering, but she’s got full control of the gas pedal.

When you mention there’s no keyboard, she sighs and mutters, _“So old-fashioned,”_ but shows you how to get to the settings menu to project one from your beads into the air or onto the nearest surface. You consider asking about the language settings while she’s in there but decide you’re not going to mention it until you know what you want.

And then, would you look at that, you’ve lined up a whole long list of questions ahead of time. Monitor configurations, syncing your phone up to the screens, accessing the net from here, streaming movies, streaming music, accessing e-books, downloading them to your external device— Feels almost like you’re an old man asking kids these days what an internet is, but what the hell, you’re getting _answers._

Plus you’re getting extra info about the restrictions you’re working under. No, you can’t get at these streaming sites that need a membership, but here’s how to navigate to locally stored entertainment-centric directories, and before you can even start to roll your eyes at how fast you’ll blow through that media _or_ before you can correct to what kind of storage space they’ve probably got in this country, Shuri casually mentions that they should have every American theatrically released film dating back to _nineteen goddamn fifty,_ but coverage is spotty for earlier films, and she honest to god looks _embarrassed_ that she has to say that and defensively adds that they’re working on neatly archiving the rest, it’s just a low-priority project.

You wish you weren’t so rattled that you could give her shit for that. You were planning on shotgunning every single movie released in the forties, this is a disgrace. But she’s already moved on before you’ve even finished processing that new info.

When you start running out of questions, you start running out of conversation, but hey, it’s more talking than you’ve done since the last time she came by. She’s checking messages on her bracelet, and the resolution isn’t quite enough for you to read it backwards through the projection, but you’re sure she’s got plenty of other stuff to keep her occupied.

Though— It’s a long shot, but as long as you’ve got someone here who’s actually _answering_ you when you talk, “Anywhere around here like a library? Somewhere I can get my hands on something physical?”

Shuri frowns. “I just showed you—”

“No, I got that. I’m talking something I can hold in my hands and turn the pages. Maybe it’s before your time, see, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we used to have these things called _books—_ ”

She rolls her eyes so hard that she practically rolls her whole head with them. “I know what _books_ are, don’t be an idiot. And dinosaurs? What on earth has happened to the American educational system.”

You don’t bother answering that, and she’s already looking away from you again, tapping something on her bracelet. She goes through a few menus until it’s displaying something that looks almost like it could be a floor plan matching your building. She turns so you can see it head-on.

“If you bring up your map on your kimoyo beads, look—”

She spreads it out vertically, and as floors separate from each other, you can tell it’s _definitely_ the building you’re in. You’ll have to experiment with whatever the no-touch version of multi-touch input is. And also the maps were hidden in your bracelet the whole time? _That’s_ why there aren’t any signs? This country gives you a headache.

But your cousin is still talking and you focus in again on what she’s saying. “Library should be… around here.” She gestures vaguely at one of the top floors. You don’t know where _you_ are, but whatever, baby steps. “There are other social areas around there too, but I’m not sure what they’ve got. It’s pretty redundant with what you can access on your own. I think it’s mostly a courtesy for foreigner visitors who don’t know how to use kimoyo beads.”

“You know those foreign visitors,” you say, blandly. “Ignorant as hell.”

She gives you a sharp look, but grins and says, “I’m glad you agree. Anyways, if you have other questions about that, you can just ask the Americans.”

It takes your brain a moment to catch up, while Shuri dismisses the projection and takes a couple steps towards the door. But, “Wait.” You heard that right, didn’t you? “There are other Americans?”

And fuck. You bite the inside of your cheek so you don’t make a face. _You_ added that ‘other’ in there. What does it mean that your cousin didn’t say it? What does it mean that you did? Does any of this mean anything at all? God _dammit,_ you don’t need to be dealing with this right now.

At least she isn’t acting like she noticed. She’s just gives you a confused look and says, “Yes? I think by now… Six of them. Didn’t anyone mention that to you?”

You pass up the cheap shot at the quality of her explanations and just drily say, “Somebody would’ve had to say anything to me in the first place for that to happen.”

She frowns and stares at you for a moment. You keep your face empty and relaxed. You’re off your game, you could be keeping this private, which it _is,_ or at least sharing it in a way that gets you some leverage or nudges her to trust you or— whatever. You’re making unforced errors, but you’re too tired to focus on strategy right now.

You relax for real when Shuri looks away, back down at her messages. Course, she brings up a new blank message and keyboard and starts typing away, and turns a little to put her body between you and the display, just in case there was any chance you might think she wasn’t talking about you. You can feel your shoulders tensing up and try to roll them, something to loosen yourself back up again. You’re sure you’re the subject of _plenty_ of messages around here these days, no reason to work yourself up over this one particularly.

Your cousin turns back to you, and you only catch enough glimpse of the display to see her hitting send before the projection fades away.

She says, “Anyways, you should visit the Americans. They’ve been here a little longer than you, but they’re so old-fashioned! Go show them how the kimoyo beads work, and then maybe I won’t be getting a million boring questions every day.”

“Wow, crazy. Six of them? What does that math work out to, about two questions per person per second? Guess that doesn’t account for time asleep, though, so—”

“Stop trying to be clever, you just look ridiculous.” She waves a hand at you as she turns. “I had to babysit you, so now it’s your turn to babysit them.”

You cross your arms and lean against the wall, trying to at least look casual. “Babysitting? We’ve gotta talk about rates, I’m not down with unpaid labor and if I’m dealing with a million questions per day then—”

“Ask my brother! Not my problem, they’re all _his_ guests. And I’m going, I have to get back to my lab and deal with _real_ numbers, not your silly pretend ones.”

She times her exit so that she gets the last word, but you don’t really mind, you’re pretty much just running on autopilot. And when she’s finally out, you can slump a little against the wall. That was… exhausting. And you’re not sure if it was good exhausting or bad exhausting.

You still don’t have much grasp how to navigate the kimoyo bead menus, but since there’s nobody here to see you looking ridiculous, you raise your wrist to your face and try, “Beads, display building map, sync to screen one.” That shouldn’t work, should be way too vague for the tech to figure out what you’re trying to say, but it does. Somehow. You shouldn’t even be surprised anymore. You add, “Beads, is there a kimoyo bead help menu? Display on screen two.”

And then, just for kicks, you ask your beads to stream _Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan_ on the third screen. As long as you’re talking to your bracelet this way, you want to have some appropriate atmosphere to go with it. Maybe you can find something in the settings that will let you set your beads to answer to ‘computer’. You’re pretty sure you’ve got more important things to worry about, but _damn,_ you really want to make that happen.

It’s tempting to just bring up the map on mobile and go straight for the library and the other Americans and make enough American-sounding noise up there to find someone who’ll _talk to you,_ but— You shouldn’t be doing that when you’re still feeling this uneasy about the difference between ‘Americans’ and ‘other Americans’. It’s fine, there’s no reason to rush. Tomorrow. You can spend the rest of today figuring out how to use these beads, maybe even how to _customize_ the way you use the beads, and then you’ll just be even more equipped to deal with things when you go find the Americans. Other Americans. Goddammit.

Though you’ve also been spacing out and instead of being productive, you’ve just been watching the movie as Saavik does her _Kobayashi_ _Maru_ and the film starts laying out all the character arcs before the plot swings into action. Maybe you’ll just lie in bed and watch Star Trek movies until you pass out. Honestly, you’re kind of feeling it. What the hell, why not. You’ve been lying around doing nothing for days, you can spend one evening lying around and doing nothing and being entertained, and then tomorrow you can figure out the— the Americans. That’ll be fine. _Tomorrow._

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://spockandawe.tumblr.com/post/171855763136/cause-its-all-the-same-spockandawe-marvel)


End file.
